Tag Archives: Bethel Lutheran Church

We are happy to announce that we are beginning to photograph the Swedish American church books in Nebraska. This is our third project in the United States. There are approximately one hundred Scandinavian American churches located across the state of Nebraska.

Photographing began on June 22nd at the Bethel Lutheran Church in Omaha, Nebraska, and filming will continue into the fall of 2017. An ArkivDigital employee, Sven, is traveling the state visiting churches and copying these historic records. Assisting him with the church visits are three project directors: Warren E. Johnson of Omaha, Nebraska, Tina Larson with the Plainsman Museum in Aurora, Nebraska, and Sandra Slater with the Holdrege Area Genealogy Club at the Nebraska Prairie Museum in Holdrege, Nebraska.

Most of the Nebraska records will be published this fall. Currently, some records for the Aurora Covenant Church in Aurora, Nebraska are available online. You can find these records by doing the following:

Select archive search in ArkivDigital

Select county

Select Nebraska

Below are links to previous blogs about Swedish-American church records in Kansas and Minnesota.

It was very common to publish a commemorative booklet in connection with an anniversary celebration in many Swedish American congregations. In addition to the written information in the publication such as the history of the congregation, there are often various kinds of photos such as church buildings, pastors, elected officers of various organizations but occasionally even photos of the regular parishioners.

In the commemorative 75th anniversary booklet published in 1960 for the Bethel Lutheran Church you will find portraits of confirmation classes from the period 1886-1957. The above image shows the confirmation classes for the years: 1904, 1909, 1914 and 1917. Most of the candidates for confirmation have Swedish sounding names.

You can find this commemorative publication in the following volume: Herndon Enne Lutheran Church Vol.: 17. To search for the document in ArkivDigital, do the following: